I was thinking the other day about stories, specifically testimonies, about God and Jesus and how He's changed someone's life. I remember the first time I had to share my testimony, I mentioned to someone that I wasn't sure what exactly to include---and what to leave out. The reply was, "Put all of it!"
Perhaps it is just the geek in me that wants to say, "You cannot put all of it; storytelling in itself is limited to choices and limitations." But I must not get academic about it.
I recently discovered a quote from the singer Jason Gray, which goes as,
"I think the best thing that can happen to us is to be 'found out' for all that we are, our religious and human pretenses stripped away to reveal our sin, pettiness, and weakness. Then we can devote our energies to better endeavors than the constant masquerade of sufficiency. The added benefit is that people are able to see how God's grace works in a real person's life. When we come clean about our brokenness, Christ becomes the star of our testimony and not us."
What was meant by "Put all of it!" was not to censor for the sake of protecting my name or saving me embarrassment, or making me look like the hero. I really really love the Gray quote. Life really is all about Jesus.
When you grow up in a Christian household, when you've gone to church longer than you've gone to school, when you've learned the songs to memorize the books of the Bible before you knew all of your multiplication tables, if you got saved when you were young and not even aware of your own vulnerability to sin, only faintly understanding you are sinful---sharing your testimony can get pretty tricky. Not because it happened so very long ago. But because, at least I find this in my own life, I have to, in the present, remind and be reminded of the gospel and what that really means for my own life now. My testimony is continually happening.
When I wrote up my testimony for the first time, it was six pages long, single-spaced. I got saved in the second sentence.
I was reminded only recently of my way back past. I got saved when I was in 6th grade. I don't remember the date, but I remember the night and what led up to it. Before that, I had "said the prayer" and "walked down the aisle" at kid's church. I think I was six. I remember in sixth grade I didn't want to, didn't really know how, to tell someone my testimony because I thought I was quite old for just getting saved.
And I remember poems. I wrote them mostly when I was mad. I was always mad. But I also wrote them to somehow dissolve my anger. I feel like God use poetry to teach me things in a way that made sense to me.
This post is kind of all over the place. I will end with one of the earliest poems I wrote.
(note: I was really into the sonnet form then. This particular poem is not set in a consistent meter. Obviously it is a metaphor, and I'm sure you have heard this analogy before.)
Sonnet No. 3
Like a healthy ray of light You came in.
But You didn't just shine, no, You contended
to make the flowers grow, intended
to heal them when they were so thin.
I loved the sun. I loved to bask
in Strcngth exceeding the strongest strong.
But I thought You were wrong
when You made it rain. I rang my voice to ask
of Your move to send forth thunder, to
damp the brightest morning with the sending of the storm,
to drown the living, and to cool the friendly warm.
I cried out to sue, but God already knew,
"This is your trying, my child, your gain
for flowers can't grow without rain."
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